Bullets and Bayonets

John Philip Sousa

Bullets and Bayonets is, by all accounts, one of Sousa’s best,
and some march aficionados consider it to be his very best.
Only recently available in a definitive edition, it shows the mature style of
Sousa, who was sixty-four when he wrote the march in 1918.
Frederick Fennell writes, “The scoring is fresh, imaginative, wonderfully
sonorouseven sparse in some sections compared to others of his
blockbusters.”
One of the difficult things about the march is its title, but in 1918 such
sentiments were reality.
The march itself does not seem militant and the trio is, in fact, as lyrical
and melodic as any in the literature.